The Hollywood Theatre's bimonthly program QUEER HORROR continues its year of women-centric programming with SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE! Hosted by Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi, this April edition opens with a pre-show twist on the ‘80s slasher classic!
Written by queer activist Rita Mae Brown and directed by Amy Holden Jones, 1982’s SLUMBER PARTY MASSACRE follows high school senior Trish Devereaux (Michelle Michaels) as she invites her best friends over for the titular sleepover only to become targets of an escaped killer with a predilection for power drills. Relying on each other – and with help from their high school Coach Jana (Pamela Roylance) – the women band together to take down the killer in a Freudian climax that paved the way for feminist revenge fantasies as far-reaching as Quentin Tarantino’s DEATH PROOF to Disney’s MALEFICENT.
QUEER HORROR is a bimonthly festival of genre works by queer artists, performers, and filmmakers questioning horror’s relation to queerness and what it means to identify with the monster. Maybe it’s the fact that queer people are so often relegated to shadows of otherness that the horror genre is more immediately relatable for us. We grew up with boogeymen. We’ve lived with boogeymen. Goblins and ghosts are a welcome escape from real-life monstrosities.
From the work of James Whale and John Waters to Patricia Highsmith and Clive Barker, horror has deeply impacted queer culture and sensibilities and QUEER HORROR asks why. QUEER HORROR is programmed and hosted by Portland’s premier drag clown Carla Rossi and her human avatar Anthony Hudson, with artwork by resident artist Jason Edward Davis.
